Editor of this issue Dr. Andrew Killick Department of Music University of Sheffield 38 Taptonville Road Sheffield S10 5BR, UK +44-114 222 0460 a.killick@shef.ac.uk

Sheffield Ethnomusicology

Newsletter 3: September 2007

Contents of this issue

Bringing samba to an international school in Portugal... by Joy Edenfield 1 Staff news 2 An interview with... ...Barbara Smith 3 Concerts and

conferences 6 Who, what, where,

when? 7 Back passage by Katie Van Buren 8

Bringing samba to an

international school

in Portugal...

by Joy Edenfield IT’S HARD TO IMAGINE that it’s been a full year since I graduated from the Univer-sity of Sheffield with an MA in World Music Studies. It’s

even more astounding to realize how much of what I learned at Sheffield still ap-plies to my daily teaching life in an international school, the most obvious example of which is my samba band.

Two years ago, I began

to see a real need for instru-mental music at my school in Portugal, and with fewer resources than I was used to (having previously worked in a large public high school in the Seattle area), I decided to pursue the idea of a percussion ensemble. My school already had several drums and African percus-sion instruments, so it seemed the next logical step would be to build on what we already had.

The first year of the samba band program was interesting to say the least. The students who turned up

for rehearsals, which unfor-tunately had to be after school, were mostly middle-school-aged students (11-13). Rehearsals were often can-celled for sports events, and student attendance was sporadic, not to mention that my own knowledge of samba music was limited to the bossa nova jazz songs I learned in my college piano lessons. So, armed only with a book on Brazilian music and an adventurous spirit, I began my journey into the world of alternative teaching, or rather teaching alterna-tive music ensembles. At first we were all flying blind but the students’ enthusi-asm carried us through that rather hectic first year, and most importantly provided me with a more relaxed platform for teaching—one in which strict lesson plans were not a requirement (nor entirely helpful), and one in which creativity, flexibility and patience were essential attributes.

During that first year, recordings were a huge resource for us, and by the

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second year, live percussion shows were popping up all over Portugal. We had several opportunities to see different groups, and I truly believe there is nothing more inspiring to a music student (or a music teacher for that matter) than seeing a live performance. For weeks my students talked about the shows and would often copy ideas and adapt them for the school samba band, sometimes adding movement and choreography. The creativity of the students was astounding and gave them a genuine sense of identity and ownership in the group. We eventually got T-shirts and wore them when we did our “gigs,” which was quite often—students, staff, administrators, and parents loved the percussion music, because it was interesting both visually and aurally, and also because it was so different from what the other music groups performed.

As anyone who has struggled to recruit for music classes knows, exposure is the best tool. Once the samba band performed a few times for the school, its popularity grew to the point that I ran out of instruments, so we simply began adding Egyptian and Moroccan instru-ments to our “not-so-Brazilian” samba band. Invitations to perform for festivals and sporting events started coming in, and more high school students began showing greater interest.

Looking forward to the next school year, I see this samba band increasing in size, booking more performances, perhaps going on a tour, even adding dancers. I think it is important to mention, though, that the rise in popularity of the samba band has not caused any of the other performing groups to suffer—quite the contrary. Students who have excelled in the samba band are now continuing their music education and signing up for the new orchestra program we are starting next year. I feel especially fortunate to work in a small school where we can offer so many options to students—where I have the freedom to expand my own teaching experiences, and the support of my administration. I see alternative ensembles such as this samba band as a valuable addition to the music programs of schools in general, but specifically to international schools that possibly have that greater flexibility in scheduling and course offerings.

Staff news John Ball <john_sohini@fastmail.fm> com-

pleted his first semester as World Music Performer in Residence, contributing seminars, workshops and individual tuition on tabla and santoor. Watch out for his concert in the Autumn 2007 University Concert Series!

Andrew Killick <a.killick@shef.ac.uk>

published his paper “Hwang Byungki and North-South Musical Exchange” in Papers of

the British Association for Korean Studies No.

11 (2007), as well as four articles on Korean topics in the Encyclopedia of Asian Theatre

(Greenwood Press, 2007). His liner notes on the music of composer Hwang Byungki have been published with Hwang’s new CD Darha

Nopigom (C&L Music, Seoul), to be released in

the UK in 2008. He also contributed an article on Hwang Byungki to an edited volume to be published in Korea in 2008. Meanwhile, he has attended a number of Northumbrian piping events in different parts of the country in pursuit of his British Academy-funded re-search project on “Northumbrian Piping and the Music of Place”. In September he took on the co-editorship of Ethnomusicology Forum

with Dr. Laudan Nooshin of City University.

Jonathan Stock <j.p.j.stock@shef.ac.uk>

spent a month on fieldwork in Taiwan at Easter, with Chou Chiener <c.chou@shef.ca.uk>, who

stayed for nearly three months. They were able to attend Da Er Ji, the traditional new year

festival in the Bunun calendar, which included numerous performances. Jonathan and Chiener have also moved to a new house—or rather an old house, built around 1885 and gradually being repaired by a small team of specialist builders. Another change has been the opening of the Centre for Applied and Interdisciplinary Research in Music, which Jonathan directs. This centre, which has a simple website at <http://www.shef.ac.uk/ music/research/cairm>, had an opening day event on 29 June and should gradually act to help all of us in the department, students and staff alike, become better at working in groups

Sheffield Ethnomusicology 3 3

as researchers and at taking our research out of the academy into the public sphere.

Katie Van Buren <k.j.vanburen@sheffield.

ac.uk> completed a chapter entitled “Partner-ing for Social Change: Exploring Relationships between Musicians and Organizations in Nairobi, Kenya” to be published in Ethno-

musicology Forum. She also presented papers

at two conferences. In September, funded by the British Academy, she travelled to Cameroon for three weeks of preliminary fieldwork to explore possibilties for future research on music and HIV/AIDS and on the place of music in Gbaya folktales. In December, funded by a Knowledge Transfer Opportunities Fund award, she will be coordinating a day-long event in Sheffield for World AIDS Day. Called “Hope through the Arts”, the event will focus on the role of arts in responding to and addressing HIV/AIDS. It will feature perfor-mances by a diversity of local music groups, as well as short speeches from scholars, staff at charity organizations, and other individuals involved in HIV/AIDS work. To help prepare for this event, she has organized a planning team composed of students, staff, and members of the local community. If you wish to join this group and/or participate in the event, please contact her as soon as possible!

An interview with...

...Barbara Smith

Third in a series of short interviews with ethnomusicologists worldwide. BARBARA B. SMITH <barbaras@hawaii.edu> is Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of Hawai‘i, where she established one of the first graduate programmes in ethnomusicology in 1960. A prolific researcher and advocate of

various Asian and Pacific musics, she is an honorary member of the Society for Ethnomusicology and a Living Treasure of Hawai‘i. She visited Sheffield for the ICTM conference in 2005. Barbara is interviewed by Andrew Killick, a graduate of the MA pro-gramme she established at Hawai‘i. When you first joined the staff of the University of Hawai‘i in 1949, it was to teach piano and music theory. What made you decide to move into world music and ethnomusicology? When I discovered that some of my students, including some of those who were most eagerly studying what I had been appointed to teach them, were suffering from low self-esteem because what they were learning was exclusively what had been introduced from the United States while their ancestries were Hawaiian or Asian, I wondered if there was something from their heritages that could—and should—be added to our curriculum. If your readers are interested, I’ve told the story at greater length in my article “Variability, Change, and the Learning of Music” (Ethnomusicology 31/2, 1987, pp. 201-220).

Many ethnomusicologists work in departments where they are the only ethnomusicologist and would like to build up a stronger presence in their discipline. Having established one the leading ethnomusicology programmes, do you have any words of advice or encouragement for them? I can’t offer advice applicable to all situations, but perhaps three of my early activities may suggest approaches adaptable to some other institutions. One of these, prompted by wanting to learn about the ancestral heritages of both Hawai‘i’s indigenous people and the descendants of the Asians who had been brought to work on the sugar and pineapple plantations, was to go to members of the local community to study with them. (Again, my article in Ethnomusicology would tell you more

about this.) I was soon surprised to realize that they viewed my activities not just as my learning from them, but also as my helping them achieve respect for their cultural heritages by the people of Euro-American origin. This led to what was a highly unusual balance and interchange between the “outreach” the university as a land-grant institution was mandated to provide from its knowledge and research work, and what I think of as “inreach” from the community to

4 Sheffield Ethnomusicology 3

the university that has contributed significantly to the strength of the ethnomusicology programme and to its recognition both in and beyond the campus.

The second approach resulted from becoming acquainted with the term “ethno-musicology” through hearing of the very recent establishment of the Society for Ethnomusic-ology, immediately joining it and attending its annual meetings. Through these, I learned of the importance of anthropological approaches to the understanding of music, though I had no formal, academic education in it, and felt too fully occupied with the components already introduced to our programme and the pro-cesses of adding to it to immediately devote a lot of time to studying it. Therefore, together with the Anthropology Department, I arranged for David McAllester to come to the university as a Carnegie Visiting Professor, to teach our first offerings of an upper division under-graduate course on musics of non-literate peoples, as well as a graduate seminar in field methods in our Music Department, and a course on the peoples then called “American Indians” in the Anthropology Department. Both departments benefited greatly from his presence.

A third approach was to arrange pro-grammes that were open to the public with no admission fee that presented music of Western and Asian traditions on equal terms. One of the earliest of these concerts, for example, presented compositions from the same time period for the European lute and Japanese Chikusen Biwa, and the European

string quartet and a Japanese koto and

shakuhachi ensemble.

I studied at Hawai‘i a few years after you had retired, and was always sorry to have missed experiencing your teaching first-hand. What do you see as the most important things to teach and learn in an ethnomusicology programme? I would place “learn” ahead of “teach” because, to me, learning should always be the focus and teaching just the “what” and “how” to guide students in their learning. I believe that students should learn general factual infor-mation about peoples’ cultures, histories, habitats and lifestyles to understand how these relate to their music-making, instrument inventories and performance contexts, as well as to learn about the major genres, musical styles and predominant aesthetic values and become sufficiently well acquainted with them to recognize them when hearing a live or

recorded performance. Among skills, I believe that students should acquire competence in verbal description from numerous perspec-tives in order to effectively communicate their perceptions and findings to audiences and readers, transcription to increase their acuity in perceiving aspects of special significance to different music cultures as well as to learn how different notation systems are able—or unable—to indicate these features visually in scores, and skill with different analytical designs so as to choose—or develop—one that will reveal how and in what specific compositional and/or performance contexts these characteristic stylistic components “work their magic” to create a distinctive style.

In addition to these, and methods, ethics, etc. of field research, I believe that students should become acquainted with the history of ethnomusicology and keep abreast with topics that are prominent as themes of recent and current meetings of ICTM, SEM and other national or regional associations devoted to ethnomusicology, as well as become com-petent in performing (at a moderate level of musicianship) in at least one, and preferably two or three traditions other than that of their own cultural heritage. I believe that all of these contribute to students’ competence to under-take a major, independent fieldwork project such as for the MA thesis or PhD dissertation.

Finally, because I tried to create an environment in which students learned through personal discovery—for instance, when they sought advice for how to handle data they had gathered through research work—instead of directing them in what to do, by question after question from various angles, I tried to gradually bring them to discovering it themselves so they would not only have the satisfaction—sometimes even thrill—of the “Aha, that’s it!” experience which can make the often laborious and difficult aspects of field-work seem a small investment for the results, but also an example of how to proceed in finding the essence in their subsequent work. Do you see yourself as practicing “applied ethnomusicology”? What would you say is the greatest contribution an ethnomusicologist can make beyond the academy? Within my experience, the designation “applied ethnomusicology” has most frequently re-ferred to educational activities outside of colleges and universities, although occasionally more broadly also, for instance to “public-sector ethnomusicology,” archival work,

Sheffield Ethnomusicology 3 5

festivals and other activities featuring multi-cultural presentations or cross-cultural under-standing. Within the term’s most prominent usage, in the late 1950s I considered that the greatest contribution ethnomusicology could make to society in Hawai‘i was to get age-appropriate songs and dances of the traditional heritages of Hawai‘i’s multicultural population taught in music classes in the elementary schools so that children of all ethnic backgrounds would grow up respecting and enjoying singing and dancing some repertory of all their peers’ heritages.

Within cross-cultural activities on a global scale, in the 1960s I considered ethnomusic-ology to have significant potential to get various American organizations that were then expanding their interests to non-Western countries, and some newly established inter-national organizations—especially the Inter-national Society for Music Education—to see their missions as not just spreading the practice of and appreciation for the musics of their own (and for ISME, those of its American and European founder members’) Western traditions, but rather as an interchange of understanding and appreciation of these and of the non-Western countries to which their interests were extending. I regret that I didn’t actively continue to contribute to pursuing it until the goal was reached, but I’m happy that, in 1994, largely through the efforts of other ethnomusicologists, it was officially adopted and by 1998, effectively implemented.

As to what may be the greatest contri-butions applied ethnomusicology can make beyond the academy today, I think there are many and various types specific to small, regional locales and countries that have recently emerged from being colonies of major metropolitan countries, and that ethnomusic-ologists who are indigenous to those locales are better qualified than I to discover how applied ethnomusicology can most effectively fill the needs and desires of their people. You’ve always been active in ICTM as well as SEM. From that experience, would you say that “ethnomusicology” is understood in the same way around the world, or are there different “ethnomusicologies” in different places? Some basic concepts and aims seem quite widely shared today, although their relative importance—and therefore methodologies to address them—varies considerably. Further-more, in addition to the present differences, ethnomusicology (both conceptually and in

practice) has differed in periods of its existence. I remember, for example, the arguments that took place in SEM in the 1950s between those who advocated for giving primacy to the methods and aims of musicology and those who, equally vigorously advocated for those of anthropology, several years before selected concepts and methodologies from other disciplines, begin-ning with linguistics, began to be adopted and incorporated.

In my teaching of ethnomusicology, I have accepted regional and cultural variance and in some circumstances even advocated for it, as in a short training programme for participants from Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia within the East-West Center’s Culture Learning Institute in 1973 when, pencil and pad in hand, one participant asked “What, precisely, is ethnomusicology?” Rather than just quoting the then widely accepted definition in the Harvard Dictionary of Music, I told him that I

would be happy to tell him what ethno-musicology has been and what, to the best of my understanding, it was in the United States (which included quoting that definition) and a few other countries, but that he and each of the participants in this group could help determine what it would become in their own island countries.

Today, with ethnomusicology’s growth in maturity as a discipline, and the increasing number of active ethnomusicologists from non-metropolitan countries, I think it is important to be aware of and interested in these differences—far more important than whether in the English language (and remembering that not all languages, including the Hawaiian language, even differentiate singular and plural), we use the collective singular form that subsumes the variances within a broad concept, entity or practice, or the plural form that draws attention to them—as seen not only in this word but in many others including music vs. musics, sea vs. seas, government vs. governments, etc. I am comfortable with both, sometimes slightly preferring one over the other depending on which aspect I wish to focus on in a particular context.

In accepting both collectivity and particularization in our discipline, I hope that ethnomusicology will continue to evolve and change in order to contribute effectively to the world’s continually changing societies.

6 Sheffield Ethnomusicology 3

Concerts and conferences

Sheffield asylum seekers’ concert

A highlight in our concert series this semester was a performance called “Sharing Music—Sharing Lives” by members from several of Sheffield’s communities of asylum seekers. Held at Firth Hall on 24 April 2007, the performance featured the Liberian choir Zeela, singer Mim Suleiman (from Zanzibar) and her group, Chinese opera singer Li Wenping, Chechen pianist Levan Khazbulatov, and Khlua Arts (Zimbabwe). The University funded the musicians’ fees and all ticket income went to Assist, which helps asylum seekers settle in this region. Overall the event helped us learn a great deal about collaboration with outside agencies and musicians, and we definitely hope to do something like this again in the future. Stretching the boundaries of Cretan music

George Zacharioudakis reports:

In February 2007 I had the honour to give a concert in Firth Hall with Nikos Katritzidakis and Vagelis Tsagarakis, two fellow musicians who came from Greece especially for the occasion. The concert was partly related to my PhD topic: The adaptation of the Cretan music repertoire to the modern flute; a theoretical

and performance practice interpretation.

Our performance endeavoured to com-bine Cretan music with Western contemp-orary interpretations, and at the same time to project improvisatory vocabularies from other Eastern idioms. It was an attempt to merge two contrasting musical realities—Western techniques and Eastern Mediterranean modal practices—while using Cretan music as a reference point. Besides singing, we blended traditional Cretan instruments (Cretan pipes, Cretan mandolin, lira fiddle and laoyto lute)

with instruments from other traditions (Western flute, alto flute and Indian recorders).

Since then our musical merging and experimentation continues in an attempt to stretch the boundaries of Cretan music. We not only try to integrate “extended” Western styles, but also to adapt models from related Eastern traditions such as the Byzantine, the Ottoman and the Indian. Although we base our performance on the evidence and sources of the past, we also use contemporary means of expression, novel methods and new per-spectives. We try to revive Cretan traditional music, projecting its beauties and its special aesthetics, and at the same time we endeavour to harmonize it with modern contexts. We let various musical voices from the West and the East influence our work creatively, and after careful experimentation, we strive to merge various qualities from distinct musical idioms on a deep level.

We are currently recording this repertoire with a plan to release a CD in Greece. Folk revival conference at Sheffield

On 6-8 September, the University of Sheffield’s Centre for 19th-century Studies and National Centre for English Cultural Tradition co-hosted a conference entitled “The Voice of the People: The European Folk Revival, 1760-1914”. Besides including full panels on “Folklore and Music” and “Folksong Revival in England”, the international conference featured papers on musical topics from Finland, Hungary, Romania, Germany, Lithuania, Gypsy communities, and the Isle of Man. ICTM conference Vienna 2007

Richard Jones reports:

Between 4 and 11 July this year a significant number of representatives from the University of Sheffield participated in the latest Inter-national Council for Traditional Music con-ference in Vienna. On arriving in Vienna I immediately became aware of the historical and continuing significance of music in the city. There were classical musicians playing on street corners, concerts advertised in every shop and the shadow cast by Mozart appeared everywhere. It was therefore particularly apt that a conference discussing music appeared within this thriving environment.

Whilst Vienna obviously differed in many ways from the previous conference in Sheffield there was continuity in some of its ideas and organisational procedures. The University of Music and Performing Arts was ideally situated, a short walk away from all forms of public transport, the main shopping centre and other tourist attractions. In

Sheffield Ethnomusicology 3 7

addition the facilities within the university were excellent, each presentation room offering a full range of electronic equipment to suit the needs of all presenters. Technical assistants, although suffering the undeserved wrath of one speaker, were approachable and willing to resolve any electronic or room-related issue. In hindsight there was only one real disappointment and that was in the location of the hostels in relation to the main conference site. Whilst the record number of participants at the conference would have undoubtedly influenced the types of accom-modation open to the organisers, it was a shame that all the hostels were not situated closer together.

Conferences in general provide an ideal environment to create or maintain existing international contacts, increase knowledge on new subjects and observe differing styles of presentation. From a personal perspective I was once more able to meet scholars working on subjects related to my interest in brass bands, such as Northern Ireland flute bands, Portuguese amateur wind bands and European Gypsy brass bands. Others from Sheffield who attended the conference commented on the wealth of thought-provoking papers.

Conferences are also ideal situations for scholars to interact socially. During the Vienna conference participants were taken on a number of excursions, including waltz work-shops, a trip to Burgenland or to the moun-tains, and an evening at two of the best new wine restaurants. Those wishing a break from the conference commented that the shopping facilities and tourist attractions were excellent.

The 2007 conference saw an increase in both the number of participants and papers presented from postgraduates and lecturers from the University of Sheffield. I urge everyone to begin preparing for the next ICTM conference in South Africa in 2009!

Who, what, where, when?

THE SUMMER GRADUATION ceremony included two PhDs on ethnomusicological subjects. Philip Ciantar <pcian@onvol.net>

travelled all the way from Malta to receive the PhD for his thesis on the Libyan ma’lūf.

Simone Kruger came from Liverpool, and her

parents from Germany, to attend her graduation with a thesis on the teaching and learning of ethnomusicology. Simone is also to be congratulated on her new appointment as

Senior Lecturer in Music, Media and Cultural Studies at Liverpool John Moores University.

Among past and present students on the

Distance Learning MA in World Music Studies, Mariana Katopi <marianakatopi@hotmail.

com> (graduated 2006) has taken up a position in music pedagogics at the University of Ioannina, Greece. Mark Hijleh <Mark.Hijleh

@houghton.edu> is on sabbatical leave this autumn from his teaching post as professor of music at Houghton College in New York State, and using it to continue his research and writing on world music theory, as well as studying shakuhachi and tabla. Fintan Cleary

<colettec5@eircom.net> was recently guest artist at a concert entitled “From Ragtime to Trad” at the Wexford Arts Centre in Ireland, playing piano with his wife Colette on double bass. After a year’s absence due to his studies at Sheffield he is returning to the Wexford Light Opera Society as Musical Director of their 2007 production. Fintan received the award for the AIMS best musical director for Jekyll and Hyde in 2006. Shay O’Connor

<shay_oc@yahoo.co.uk> reports two recent deliveries: his MA dissertation on July 2 and his son Yang Tom on July 18. It was good of Yang to wait!

8 Sheffield Ethnomusicology 3

Fay Hield <f.hield@shef.ac.uk> has

successfully upgraded from MPhil to PhD and continues to pursue her research on the benefits of folk singing, jointly supervised between the Music Department and NatCECT. Over the summer she has been performing at various festivals with her band, The Witches of Elswick, which will be disbanding after a Halloween tour due to other pressures. Fay adds: “The rest of my time is spent tending to my little one, Polly, who loves walking, horses and scrambled eggs.”

Carla Ribeiro <carlatene@hotmail.com>,

has published her translation of Laurent Aubert’s book The Music of the Other (Ashgate,

2007) while continuing to work on her PhD thesis on migrant musicians in northern England.

Joy Lu <joylu9@yahoo.com.tw>, a grad-

uate of the MA in Ethnomusicology (2006), begins her doctoral studies at Wesleyan University this autumn semester, supported by both a Wesleyan University Scholarship and a Study Abroad Scholarship from the Taiwan Ministry of Education.

Back passage

by Katie Van Buren

I am the Very Model of an Ethnomusicologist

DIRECTIONS: To be sung to the melody of the Major-General’s song in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance

Solo: I am the very model of an ethnomusicologist All matters music-cultural I find I simply can’t

resist I know the founding fathers, and the mothers

too we can’t forget From Willard Rhodes to Rose Brandel, yes each

and every one I’ve met I’m very well acquainted too with concepts

theoretical Of semiotics, agency, and process theory I can

recall Respect for all I advocate; I seek to know, not

to condemn (About “trans-musicality,” I’m flummoxed like

the rest of them)

Chorus: About “trans-musicality,” we’re flummoxed like

the rest of them

About “trans-musicality,” we’re flummoxed like

the rest of them

About “trans-musicality,” we’re flummoxed like

the rest of them

Solo: I’ve honed my skills in aspects of all fieldwork

methodology In interviews and transcriptions and frequent

reflexivity In short, music and culture, these I find I simply

can’t resist I am the very model of an ethnomusicologist Chorus: In short, music and culture, these we find we

simply can’t resist

We are the very models of great ethno-

musicologists

More verses are welcome. Please send them in!

Comments, suggestions and written contri-butions or photos are welcome at any time. The deadline for the next issue is Friday 11 January 2008. Send items to:

Dr Katie Van Buren Department of Music University of Sheffield 38 Taptonville Road Sheffield S10 5BR, UK +44-114 222 0497 k.j.vanburen@shef.ac.uk